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When I posted last month about the all-time players who played for the best offensive and defensive teams in NBA history, there was a common theme among a number of the names at the top of each list: namely, they all played for a certain coach, or under a certain scheme. It only makes sense, then, to do the same study for coaches, and determine the guys who have called the shots for the top offenses and defenses of all time (or at least, since 1951).

First, the offensive coaches (minimum 140 career games coached), sorted by points of lifetime regular-season offensive rating above the league average, along with the best offensive team they ever coached:

D'Antoni's presence at the top of the list shouldn't surprise anyone who read the post about players on the top offensive teams, a ranking dominated by members of the Steve Nash-era Suns. In fact, there is a lot of overlap in general between these lists and the player lists from a month ago... As always, it's a frustrating exercise to separate the coach's contribution from that of his players, and you can go around in circles forever arguing whether D'Antoni made Nash great, or vice versa.

At any rate, here are the top defensive coaches along with the best defensive team they ever coached (remember, negative numbers are good for defenses):

It really is amazing how much the Celtics' defensive fortunes changed when Russell arrived in Boston. You might be tempted to look at this and conclude that the Celts' dominant D should be credited mostly to Russell (especially since Boston continued to be a great defensive team after Red retired and Russell became coach), but Auerbach clearly orchestrated the acquisition of Russell in the first place and showed a remarkable amount of vision in the way he planned the team's construction. Again, it's all but impossible to differentiate between player and coach contribution, and in most successful cases it's a mutual relationship where neither could have accomplished as much without the other.

Finally, here is every coach since 1951 to rack up 500 career games, just to give you an idea of how the legends stack up:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 21st, 2010 at 10:49 am and is filed under Analysis, Coaches, History, Statgeekery.
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Cloud, you can't take one exception (Lakers beat Magic) and generalize it to a massive trend (defense better than offense, or whatever you're trying to hint at with that particular example). There's chance involved, good teams sometimes beat slightly less-good teams, and I'm willing to bet the 2009 Lakers more than made up for a lesser defense with their superior offense.

That pretty cleared delineates that, while great D doesn't assure you a championship, it goes a lot further than a great offense. Russell's Celtics are yet another demonstration of this: their offense was actually below average most years, but they were the greatest dynasty the sport's ever seen.

Cloud, that chart doesn't mean the 2009 Magic are the "7th best defense", it means Stan Van Gundy has the 7th-best defensive rating relative to the league of any coach since 1951 with 140 career games, and the 2009 Magic were the best defensive team he ever coached. The 2009 Lakers aren't on either chart because they were neither Phil Jackson's best offensive team nor his best defensive one.

Mike D'Antoni is #1 on the list for offense with a rating 5.14... however sort the legends table by defense and Mike D'Antoni is the worst on the list with a score of 3.52

It's a really good thing that MVP voters completely forgot that basketball has two sides of the court when they voted Nash as MVP twice. The completely ignored the impact he had on placing his coach on the top of the worst defenses list.